SCARR – Day Three (Post #479) 4/6/2014

Day Three came with the sun shining and the air a bit on the chilly side. As soon as the sun came up it warmed up nicely. Our plan for the morning was to run some trails.

I got dressed in my Rover Cannibal shirt and cooked up some breakfast. We knocked down breakfast and went up to the main pavilion to meet the other drivers.

I found the other drivers very ready and after learning Jacob Dearborn drew the beginner group. Jake as he was called was very nice young man and had a course sorted out. We fell in behind a great couple named Max and Diane and their Series. They had owned it for twenty years if I remembered that correctly. We got the CBs set and off went.

Following a Series at first had me worried. I know how tough they are and after Diane telling me, “You just put it in gear and it will climb over anything.” I was excited to see where they would go and if we could follow.

Jake took us on some great trails. Several were at first glance perhaps more technical than our nearly stock Range Rover could handle.

We went down Louisiana Back Roads and then found ourselves back at the end of Solihul. We took the hill climb and the Range Rover performed fantastically.

We then went over to On Any Sunday. It was a windy track and the rains of the day before left a few places of standing water. The soil here “perked” quite well and there wasn’t much mud thankfully.

 

We went to Linda Gail and then on to Greenlane. One of the turns had difficult line and we got to watch Harold in his Discovery rock back and forth a few times. Mr. Fisher and I thought for sure he was going to roll over. He had the right rear up in the air and it looked dicey for him from our point of view. When we talked later he said, “It isn’t any fun if you don’t try different approaches.” If you say so Harold! We took the same line as Max and Diane which was more to the right than Harold’s line on the left side.

 

There were several approaches like this one, muddy and wet and a great test for the suspension. The Range Rover went over them like a billy-goat.

Jake must have broken something at some point. We stopped back on the main road and he was sure something was not right. He bailed out at that point and Mr. Fisher and I followed as we heard a new noise as well.

Ours was a squawking sound that I thought sounded like a metal cup being rubbed. I know there are at least two metal cup-shaped objects and I was hoping it was the spring retainers and not a CV joint.

We went back to our camp for lunch and then back to the main pavilion for another trail in the afternoon. No one wanted to run another beginner group and we watched a slightly more advanced group leave. Bill Burke was demonstrating tire repair. I went to watch. He showed how to pop a tire off the rim using his high lift jack. He showed how to use a tire repair kit to plug a tire. All good stuff. I asked him about sewing a tire with wire like I had seen in a magazine article. He said that was “Camel Trophy” stuff. He also described the Italian team using the bottom of their shoes to repair their tires in Africa. He said they went through 20 tires in 7 hours.

He then took us to a trail to demonstrate a winch recovery. What we didn’t know was we would go up a 3 diamond trail to get to the classroom.

This is a picture from the bottom looking up.

Excuse my fan-boy enthusiasm as we recover from a slip with a technique Bill Burke taught us in the beginner class. The traction control system on the Range Rover Classic using the Borg Warner transfer case is prone to sending the power to the wheel that gives the least resistance. When you articulate the axles that could mean the two wheels with the least resistance could leave you stranded across an obstacle. The trick is to load up the brake with the left foot and then press the accelerator with the left. I little two foot driving. When you do this the transfer case thinks all the tires have traction and thus gives all the tires power. As you brake you move the engine RPMs into the 100-1800 range. As you approach 1200 RPMs your Range Rover Classic will take off again like a Sherpa with a light load.

I was really excited and you can tell it in the video. Bill really knows his stuff and it worked just like he said it would. I only broke about six rules after that by taking my hands off the wheel to give Bill a thumbs up and taking my eyes off the trail while giving him praise.

We then watched Bill give a lecture about winches and the equipment you need to do recoveries.

Bill’s joke was this. He described people calling a pulley a “snatch block” they aren’t snatch blocks they are pulleys. He said his wife didn’t like the term “snatch block”. The only lady in attendance said she didn’t either. Then Bill said we could just call them spread leg-single opening pulleys. He then gave the classic rim-shot sound. Well played Bill.

We went back to the pavilion for dinner and the inevitable drawings. We set up at a table and waited for the dinner to be served. It was Mexican food. Lots of food and it was delicious.

Then we waited for the drawing. There were probably 50 items auctioned off. My only complaint about the entire event was the auction. We watched at least 5 people win 5 prizes each. The basket was not mixing the tickets and the person pulling tickets was pulling tickets from only one series of tickets. There were theoretically 1000 tickets in the 337 range from 337000 to 337999. Most of the tickets were drawn from that range. Our tickets were from the 836 series.

We did finally win a tire repair kit from Smitty Built. I don’t remember the sponsor who put it up. There were two winches given away including a 12,000 pound Superwinch. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, especially the guys that won the lion’s share of the prizes.

We helped tear down the tables and chairs. I went around and tried to thank all the sponsors. I also found Jeff Aronson and Bill Burke and thanked them for being there and told them again how much I enjoyed meeting them in person.

We got back to camp and charged our electronics a bit. We had a victory beer and turned in for the night.

As the posts become available I’ll update links for the other posts.

SCARR – Day One

SCARR – Day Two

SCARR – Day Four

What did we learn from the third day:

• Trust your truck.
• These Land Rovers are harder to break than you think.
• I need want a High Lift jack and bumpers and rock sliders.
• You can have a lot of fun driving 3 mph.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.